It’s 1966 and Im 13 years old. Gasoline is 32 cents, LBJ is president, there are race riots up north, Vietnam protests are on TV every night, the Beatles proclaim they are more popular than Jesus, Richard Speck murders eight female students in their dorm, Star Trek premieres on television, Ronald Reagan is elected governor of California, John Connally is the governor of Texas, Walt Disney dies and Adam Sandler is born, a Volvo is built that will eventually drive three million miles, and mini-skirts are popular. At 13, I am only dimly aware of some of these events and completely unaware of others. Except for the mini-skirts, those I am keenly aware of and profoundly grateful for that fashion. To say it was a different world back then is to severely understate the case, it wasnt just a different world it was a different reality, almost an alternate universe. At 13, I was a free agent when I was out of school and not doing homework or chores. Once those three things had been taken care of my time was my own. Other than being told to be home by dark and to not commit any crimes, I was unrestrained. I had a bicycle and young strong legs to pump the pedals. I, and a lot of other boys and girls, would blithely ride away from home barely hearing the admonition to be back by dark as we pedaled furiously away, far away some of the time. It was a world where children from the ages of about six on up were free to roam without constraint. There were no cell phones to keep in touch with us; our parents didnt know where we were after we left the yard. Often we were ten or more miles away, sometimes in town and sometimes out in the country. In todays world that would probably be considered parental abuse. Back then it was just normal. Were we safer back then? I doubt it. Parents just weren’t as scared. I suppose its the mass media that has driven that fear to the fever pitch its at today. There wasnt a fishing spot in a fifteen mile radius that I couldnt get to on my bicycle. It wasnt that hard to set the bike over the other side of a barb wire fence, climb through, and pedal off across pasture or forest. Cross country bicycles were unheard of, but we rode cross country routinely. We biked across every kind of terrain, urban and suburban and rural. Bicycles have the ability to go anywhere you can walk, except maybe through swamps. It was a swamp I was headed for that Saturday morning, or rather what we called a slough (rhymes with stew). It wasnt like a big Louisiana swamp, more of a boggy area about four acres in size with a two acre stock tank in the middle of it. A stock tank, or just a tank, is called a pond everywhere but Texas. There were some big fish in that water and some big water moccasins too. I was on my way to a valuable lesson, but I thought I was just going fishing. To read the entire article go to: fishexplorer/tx/articles.asp?action=det&aid=97
Posted on: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 21:24:59 +0000
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